Discrimination at the workplace is a significant issue for many companies, and it also concerns promotion and new position hiring issues. It is often the case that the headquarters of the company bring their friends or relatives to the company and give them a job, though they may not fulfill all the requirements as other workers do. However, quite often employees hesitate to talk about it for several reasons: whether a fear to be fired or inability to accurately interpret their own rights concerning discrimination at the workplace. Moreover, it is a common thing to discriminate women at the company, preferring to give the job position to the man, even if a woman is perfectly qualified for the job (Wageproject.org). Fairness at the workplace is an issue of high interest and of high attention from the government side, and in order not to experience all of the minuses of being discriminated at job a person has to know his or her rights and should take courage to fight for them.
First of all, it is important to understand what an employment discrimination law is. Hg Legal Resources official website defines an employment discrimination law as the one that refers to the state and federal laws prohibiting employers from negative worker treatment based on particular characteristics that are not related to job performance. Still, not all attributes / characteristics qualify for discrimination in the workplace (Hg.org).
Various anti-discrimination laws and the Civil Act of the year 1964 helped to significantly eliminate terrible discrimination at many companies, though there are still cases that imply discrimination, especially towards women and in questions of promotion and hiring. Moreover, the statistics shows that among the workplace discrimination cases that were brought to court employers won almost all, with only 2% exclusion (Workplacefairness.org). There is an organization U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that has enforced several legislations against discrimination on various bases, such as gender, age, sex, race, religion, or disabilities. Therefore, it is stated that “the law forbids discrimination in every aspect of employment” (Eeoc.gov). Moreover, the laws that are implemented by EEOC highlight most important aspect of employment discrimination and they include: job advertisements, recruitment, application and hiring, background checks, job referrals, job assignments and promotions, pay and benefits, employment reference, discipline and discharge, reasonable accommodation and disability, reasonable accommodation and religion, harassment, training programs, dress code, and constructive discharge (Eeoc.gov). As it is observed, the legislation touches all possible spheres of potential discrimination at the workplace.
The legislation enforced by U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission states that “it is illegal for an employer to make decisions about job assignments and promotions based on an employee’s race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability, or genetic information. If an employer requires employees to take a test before making decisions about assignments or promotions, the test may not exclude people of those characteristics covered above” (Eeoc.gov). Therefore, it is seen that governmental organization is doing its best to fight against discrimination in various aspect of work life. The advantages of this particular legislation include a distinctive list of criteria to which the discrimination may take place. In addition, this law underlines not only promotion and hiring, but also emphasizes assignments, which is also crucial to pay attention by employees and employers. However, there is also a huge gap in this legislation, which can be considered as its major disadvantage. This piece of legislation does not touch the aspect of friends and relatives promotion and hiring, while disqualifying those who possess necessary skills and qualities in a higher level than those who actually get hired or promoted. It is essential for the company to keep precise track of who gets hired and promoted. The guidelines should be very specific, so that employees understand the required qualities, and everyone, including employer’s relatives and friends should apply for a new position or promotion on common bases. The following aspect should be included into the legislation of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Another governmental organization that is dealing with discrimination in promotion and hiring is United States Department of Labor. In total this organization administers more than 180 laws that are aimed at fighting with various types of discrimination. For example, U.S. Department of Labor is dealing with wages and working hours by introducing Fair Labor standards Act; it also deals with worker’s compensation and has enabled several acts such as Federal Employees’ Compensation Act or Black Lung Benefits Act (Dol.gov).
One of the most related to promotion and hiring act is the so called No Fear Act, or Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act (section 301) that was introduced in the year 2002. This particular legislation concerns different fields of workplace, such as employment and training administration, mine safety and health administration, wage and hour division, and worker’s compensation programs. The following No Fear Act requires the employers to provide the statistics of recorded employees’ and former employees’ complaints against discrimination based on various attributes (Dol.gov). It can be considered as one of the major advantages of this piece of legislation, because it helps the legal authorities to keep track of the real situation in the companies. However, one of the obvious disadvantages that lie on the same line with the act’s major advantage is that there is no way to control the statistics, because it is up to the employer to provide the data to the Department of Labor. It is crucial to make addition to the No Fear Act that would also involve the control of the provided data and time to time revisions of the real situations by questioning employees on private bases.
Moreover, it is important to mention that Department of Labor has specific legislations that concern discrimination on the bases of disabilities and age. Those are the common practices that employees can experience while coming on the interview for a new job position. Another discrimination attribute that is in the air for the modern world is women discrimination, and what is even more, it is proved by statistics. The Fortune 500 companies’ list executives are mostly men, and only 16% of them are women (Workplacefairness.org). It is crucial for all the governmental organizations to create specific guidelines that would be difficult to go around and that would prohibit gender discrimination at the workplace.
Overall, there are various legislations that strive to deal with discrimination on various aspects in the workplace. As it was mentioned in the very beginning, the main Civil Act that was introduced 50 years ago helped to change the situation for the better and gave the employers the guidelines on the appropriate treatment of their employees. Despite the fact that we all live in a modern world where equality is considered to be one of the main principles in various spheres of life, there are still cases that occur in the workplace and concern discrimination due to various principles. Governmental organizations keep introducing new legislation that would help to even more improve the existing situation, and it is important to keep in mind that something can always be done and developed in order to protect people of different age, religion, sex, genetic information, culture, race, and etc.
References
Discriminatory Hiring/Promotion. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2014, from http://www.wageproject.org/files/ncdisch.php
Equal Employment Opportunity Data Posted Pursuant to the No Fear Act. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2014, from http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/crc/NoFearResult.htm
Hidden Barriers - discrimination. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2014, from http://www.workplacefairness.org/sc/discrimination.php
Prohibited Employment Policies/Practices. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2014, from http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/
What is Employment Discrimination Law? (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2014, from http://www.hg.org/employment-discrimination-law.html
